


running through rose thorns

by ShowMeAHero



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Big Dick Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First Kiss, Fix-It, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), Prosthesis, Stanley Uris Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:55:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22038157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShowMeAHero/pseuds/ShowMeAHero
Summary: “Please don’t hate me,” Richie says. “And let me— Let me finish before you say anything, okay?”“Okay,” Eddie agrees, “but I could never hate you, Rich. I promise.”Richie laughs dryly, humorlessly. After a long moment, he says, “Eddie, I love you.”“I love you—”“No,” Richie interrupts him. Eddie furrows his brow, his heart pounding again. “I told you, let me finish before you talk, you dipshit.” He shuts his eyes, exhales; Eddie’s terrified. When Richie opens his eyes again, he says, “Eds, I’minlove with you."
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Comments: 40
Kudos: 1137





	running through rose thorns

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sabisun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabisun/gifts).



> Another commission for [sabisun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabisun)!
> 
> Title taken from ["Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince"](https://genius.com/Taylor-swift-miss-americana-and-the-heartbreak-prince-lyrics) by Taylor Swift.

Richie’s looking at Pennywise until, abruptly, he’s not. Instead, he’s in a hazy otherworld, a purple fog surrounding him. There’s a brilliant light shining through the mist, and he squints, trying to see; it’s getting closer, and, as it approaches him, he realizes it’s actually three lights, spinning around each other. He frowns, brow furrowing, and reaches out. The smog clears, suddenly, and he slams his eyes shut, blinded. His chest starts to ache, and then he’s waking up, looking up at Eddie over him. Eddie says something, then there’s blood all over Richie’s face and Eddie’s in the air and then he dies, Eddie _dies—_

And then he’s alive again. Richie sees a flash of the inside of the cave as he’s released from the Deadlights, still over fifteen feet off the ground. That’s all he has time to process before gravity grabs him by the ankles and yanks him down; he lands hard on his feet, feeling his knees and ankles crunch under him as he slams backwards, his head banging off the sheet of rock underneath.

“Richie!” Eddie’s voice exclaims. Richie blinks, and Eddie’s there again, just like Richie had seen in the Deadlights. He’s not sure if this is another vision, or if these realities are all real, but he’s not about to let Eddie die again. In spite of the blinding pains shooting through his legs and his back, he launches himself forward and tackles Eddie back, Pennywise’s claw slicing through the air and grazing Richie’s shoulder as it pierces the stone ground behind them.

“Get up, _get up,”_ Richie says breathlessly, hurrying to his feet. He grabs Eddie by the hand and yanks him towards the hole in the wall he’d seen in his vision, only to find that it doesn’t actually exist. Whirling, he sees Stan hiding beneath an outcropping; when they make eye contact, Stan motions vigorously to them. It takes Eddie pulling Richie’s arm over his shoulders and supporting half his weight to get him there, but they manage it together. Eddie deposits Richie up against the stone, and he tries not to cry out when he hits the ground.

“Are you okay?” Stan asked in a whisper. Eddie pushes him aside to grab Richie by the chin, examining his eyes, then feeling for his pulse in his throat. All Richie can do is stare up at him, trying to ignore the pain as Eddie looks him over. He remembers Eddie’s death still, so fresh, almost beyond his fingertips, like it’s half-real.

“Eddie,” Richie says. Eddie lifts his head from where he’s examining Richie’s left ankle to smile up at him.

“Hey, Rich,” Eddie tells him. “You’re alright, bud. You’re good. Right?”

“Right,” Richie says. Eddie’s eyes leave his face and drift to his shoulder, and he frowns, lifting himself so he’s leaning over Richie’s lap. Richie tips his head back, shutting his eyes and exhaling harshly.

“Are you okay? What hurts?” Eddie demands. Richie shakes his head. “Is it your shoulder?”

“It _all_ hurts, Eds,” Richie whispers to him. Pennywise’s claw slams down next to them in the next beat, and he jumps, cursing, _“Motherfucker—”_

“Go, let’s go, come on,” Stan shouts. Richie forces himself to get up and run, looking back to make sure Eddie’s behind him as he goes. Eddie ducks under a falling crumble of rock, then makes eye contact with him.

“Look _forward!”_ Eddie screams at him. Richie turns around just in time to avoid slamming right into a jagged outcropping off the wall, but it scratches his face, opening up his cheek as he goes. He grabs his face in his hand, swearing. Eddie grabs him by his other wrist and pulls him forward, but Pennywise launches at them as soon as they slow down, biting down on Eddie’s right arm, directly above his elbow. Richie screams at the same time Eddie does; Stan’s already gone, darting away from Pennywise and diving underneath his limbs to get to Ben where he’s helping Bev wrap a wound on her leg.

Richie yanks his jacket off, balling it up and pressing it to the open wound of Eddie’s arm. He drags him forward, ignoring the pain blistering up his spine as he goes. He manages to find a hole in the wall that actually exists and pulls Eddie inside. Eddie just leans up against the wall, tears streaming down his face as he looks up at Richie.

“You’re okay,” Richie assures him. “I promise. You’re okay. I’m gonna make sure you’re okay.”

It’s the worst thing that’s happened to Richie in his entire life, by far. He remembers when he found Pennywise about to eat Eddie when they were children, when Eddie’s arm had been snapped in half and Richie had had to break it back into place. He remembers trying to kill himself when he was only sixteen years old, terrified of being himself with his family in Derry. He remembers years spent in isolation without the Losers, lonely and drifting helplessly through life. In spite of everything, all that shit, every single _horrible_ thing that’s happened to him— Watching Eddie look up at him, half his arm gone, unable to stop crying as he clutches at Richie with his left hand— his _only_ hand— Richie can’t let him die. He _can’t._ He loves Eddie too much; it’s impossible, he can’t, _he can’t—_

“Richie,” Eddie says desperately. Richie wraps his jacket more tightly around Eddie’s arm, then yanks off Eddie’s belt to make a tourniquet with it. He doesn’t even know if that’s the right thing to do; he just does it because it’s the only thing he can think to do.

“I’m gonna get you out of here,” Richie tells him. “I got you.”

“We have to make Pennywise small,” Eddie tells him, insistent. “I made him small by choking him, Richie, we can make him small—”

“Okay, I’ll tell them, you just— you stay here, don’t move,” Richie orders him. He grabs Eddie’s hand and holds it up against the jacket and says, “Keep this here. Do _not_ move.”

“Yeah, okay,” Eddie says tiredly. Richie looks at him, just a moment too long; Eddie looks up at him with a frown. “Rich, _go.”_

“I’m going.” He doesn’t still, for a moment. He wants to tell Eddie everything, because he almost just lost him and he can’t stand the idea of one or both of them dying without Eddie knowing how fucking _loved_ he is. He’s heard Eddie talking about his wife, how miserable he is with her; he doesn’t want _that_ to be the way they go, with Eddie thinking nobody loved the real him when Richie would die for him in a heartbeat.

“Rich,” Eddie says again. “C’mon, Richie. You can do it.”

Richie shakes his head, then takes Eddie’s face in his hands. After a beat, he says, “Eddie, I love you.”

Eddie just stares up at him before he says, “I love you, too, Richie.”

There’s not enough time to discuss it or explain it or elaborate on it. Instead, Richie just stares at him for a moment longer, committing Eddie’s face to memory before he finally gets to his feet and slips back out the hole in the wall. His legs and his back are still crunching, displaced, and his shoulder and face are opened up and bleeding, but he manages to get himself over to Mike and Bill to tell them, “Eddie says he made It small by choking It, how do we make it small?”

Mike figures it out first, shouting down Pennywise until he’s shrinking back against the stone altar in the center of the sewer cavern. The rest of them catch on quick, though, and they help him, until they’re able to reach in and crush Pennywise’s still-beating heart. It’s only then that Richie runs, darting back through the hole in the wall to find Eddie slumped but still looking up at him.

“Hey, hey, Eds, let’s go, he’s dead, we can get outta here,” Richie tells him, all in one breath. Eddie reaches out for him; Richie turns and crouches, pulling Eddie up over his shoulders and his back and standing. Eddie’s legs around around his waist, and he clings on with his good arm while Richie shuffles them back out through the hole and carries him back out piggyback-style.

“We did it,” Bev says to him as they get closer. Richie just keeps walking right past her, towards the way they got in.

“Eddie needs a hospital right now, right _now,_ let’s _go,”_ Richie tells her. He can’t even begin to entertain the idea that Eddie could die in this sewer. It’s not even a fucking _option._ Eddie Kaspbrak does not die in a motherfucking clown-infested _sewer_ as long as Richie Tozier still has a heartbeat.

Richie doesn’t break stride, carrying Eddie on his back all the way up the cavern, out of the well, through the fucking crackhead house on Neibolt Street and out into the road. He won’t let anyone take Eddie from him; he’s starting to think the adrenaline from carrying him is the only thing keeping him going, like when a mom can suddenly lift an entire car off her baby.

Stan has to stop Richie from walking when he’s already halfway down the street. The house collapsed behind him, but he didn’t even break stride; Stan and Ben have to redirect Richie just to get him to slow down, and then he’s staggering, falling to one knee. Mike and Ben pull Eddie off of him just as Richie’s vision starts to blur black at the corners. He can barely think.

“Guys, I don’t feel good,” Richie says, but it all comes out in a mush of, _“guysidonfillgum—”_ until he can’t breathe. He falls further, catching himself on one palm before he tips over into the road. Through Stan’s voice in his ear and the sound of sirens coming towards them and the crunch of gravel under his face, Richie reaches for Eddie and grabs onto his good hand. Eddie squeezes him back and doesn’t let go until they’re forcibly separated. It’s only once Richie sees Eddie get lifted up into an ambulance that he lets enough relief flood through him to drive out the adrenaline and knock him unconscious.

* * *

Eddie wakes up before Richie does. He’s in the intensive care unit, he can see the sign from his bed, and Bill is asleep in a chair next to him, his head drooped down with his chin against his chest. Eddie tries to reach out to him, but his hand doesn’t move; it’s only then that he remembers his right hand isn’t there to reach with anymore.

He feels tears well up in his eyes, embarrassingly enough. He uses his left hand to wipe them away instead. Richie had always made fun of him when they were kids for being left-handed, saying it was the Devil’s hand and the Devil was jerking him off just to watch Eddie scream at him—

“Richie,” Eddie says. Bill jumps with a startled snort, then blinks, rubbing at his face before he looks at Eddie.

“Oh, sh-shit, Eds, you’re awake,” Bill says. He reaches out and presses the call button for the nurse on the bed. “It hasn’t been that long, they gave you some pain medication and you just fell asleep. It’s only been an hour.”

“My arm,” Eddie says. He doesn’t even know what he’s asking, or saying; Bill nods anyways, looking just as upset as Eddie feels, his face all furrowed and distraught. “My _arm,_ Bill.”

“I know,” Bill tells him, and that’s when Eddie bursts into tears. Bill sits on his left side on the bed, pulls Eddie into a hug and rubs his back as he cries. He hasn’t cried in years, and, suddenly, he can’t stop; he just buries his face in Bill’s disgusting shirt and hides there as sobs wrack his chest.

 _“Bill,”_ Eddie groans mournfully. Bill turns his face into Eddie’s hair and just keeps holding him until Eddie’s gasping for air.

“I’ve got you, Eds,” Bill tells him. “Y-You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

It takes a few more minutes for Eddie to get his breathing under control, but he manages it. He has no idea how long it’s been since he woke up, but he’s startled out of the daze he’s gone into by a tentative knock on his door.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” a nurse says. Bill gets up off the bed and retreats back to his chair, and the nurse comes in to look over the dressings on Eddie’s wounds and talk to him about aftercare and residual limb pain and physical therapy and prosthetics until Eddie’s head is spinning. She gives him more pain medication, at the end of it all, changes the bandage on his cheek where his face has been stitched up from Bowers’ knife wound; it’s only then that she finally removes the bandages from his arm.

The end of his arm has been cleaned up, from what he can tell. It had looked shredded in the cavern, after Pennywise attacked him, but it’s been neatly straightened out and sewn up. He only has one tidy line of black stitches at the end of his arm now, which ends right above where his elbow would have been.

“It’s going to heal up real nice,” the nurse tries to assure him. Eddie can’t stop staring down at the end of his arm while she’s cleaning it. It’s only once it’s bandaged up again that Eddie can focus enough to speak.

“Where’s Richie?” he asks. The nurse looks to Bill, who looks from Eddie up to her in return. “Is he okay?”

“He’s not awake yet,” Bill tells him. The nurse seems to deflate a little bit. “He has some head trauma so they’re keeping him under for a little bit. But it’s going to be okay.”

Eddie’s pulse starts speeding up on the heart rate monitor behind him, a rapid beeping going off in the machine to warn the nurses. When the nurse can’t calm him down and Eddie starts working himself up into a panic attack, the nurse sedates him again.

It’s only as he’s falling back asleep that he remembers he didn’t even think to ask about Myra.

* * *

When Eddie wakes up again, it’s dark. His room is empty, a curtain around the area the door had been when he’d looked around earlier. He can still see out into the rest of the unit, and the whole place is dimmed for the night.

Someone’s left his phone plugged in for him next to his hospital bed, on his bedside tray. He picks it up and turns it on; the thing blows up with notifications from his boss, his coworkers, Myra, and the Losers, who have added him to a group chat for the seven of them. Scrolling through the Losers messages first, Eddie sees that Richie’s since woken up and is also being kept in the ICU, with two broken ankles, one cracked kneecap and one shattered kneecap, a few busted discs in his spine, and long gashes torn through his shoulder and his face. He’s having a hard time talking from the stitches in his face, but is apparently in good spirits, especially after finding out Eddie was okay. Eddie’s chest hurts when he reads that message from Beverly.

All Eddie can think of, in the darkness, is Richie’s face as he’d held Eddie’s head in his hands and said, so intensely, so earnestly, _“I love you.”_ Eddie’s not sure he’s ever seen Richie so grave before, like what he was saying needed to be taken seriously or he’d go out of his mind. He’s not sure what possessed him to tell Richie that he loves him, too — fear, maybe, or the heat of the moment. He has a wife. Maybe it’s just that he’s always loved Richie, sort of, like how he loves the rest of the Losers. It’s just that Richie had always been his best friend, so he loved him differently.

Now that he has Richie back, he realizes he’s never really had a best friend quite like him before. Eddie spent so many days as a kid wanting to hold Richie’s hand, spend every minute with him, play with him and talk to him and hang out with him all the time. They’d always been close. It’s not surprising that he’d say he loves him. Best friends love each other, not that Eddie’s had one since Richie. He sees movies, though. It’s normal.

His chest still hurts. Thinking about loving Richie is giving him a stomachache. He skims the texts from Myra from his notification screen so she can’t see that he’s read them, only to find that she’d been called and was on her way to him. Of course she’d been called; she was his next of kin. She’s his wife. It made sense.

With a twist, he realizes he doesn’t want her there. He wants her to stay away from him, to keep the Losers and Derry separate from his life with Myra. The idea of them touching makes him sick, the concept of Richie and Myra in the same room makes him _sick._ He pulls his scratchy blanket tighter around himself with his one hand before locking his phone and setting it aside again. His head swims, so he shuts his eyes and falls back asleep.

* * *

The next day, they let him get up and walk around. His first stop, he insists, has to be Richie’s room, and when his nurse goes to ask Richie if that’s okay, Eddie can _hear_ him whoop with excitement. He almost launches himself out of Ben’s hands to go towards the room he heard Richie’s voice from, but the reason they’d given him over to Ben at all was because they’d anticipated him trying to break free, and Ben manages to hold him back.

One step at a time aggravates Eddie, especially since his legs are _fine,_ but his nurse makes him go slow until he gets to Richie’s room. When they see each other, Richie’s entire face breaks open with joy; Eddie feels like his face does pretty much the same thing.

“Eds, aren’t you a sight for sore _fucking_ eyes,” Richie says, sounding choked up. He reaches out, and Eddie goes to him, sitting down on the edge of Richie’s bed and letting himself get pulled into his embrace. Richie’s right shoulder is all bandaged, his right arm strapped to his chest to keep it immobilized, but he holds on tight to Eddie with his left arm, and Eddie does the same in return.

“I’m so sorry,” Eddie tells him, because it’s the first words that he thinks should come out of his mouth. Richie shakes his head.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Richie assures him. He says it so immediately, so instinctively, that Eddie can’t help but believe that Richie really believes that. Eddie shakes his head, refusing to let go.

“We’ll give you guys a minute,” the nurse says. Richie hears her and Ben leave, the door clicking shut softly behind them, and Richie’s all waterworks the second they’re gone.

“Jesus Christ,” Eddie says. Richie shakes his head, clinging to Eddie like he was drowning. His legs are both in casts, his face and head are half-wrapped in bandages. Someone’s put his glasses on for him, though, and his curls are spilling out the sides of his bandages; he’s still recognizably Richie, even in the hospital gown and mummy wrappings.

“I’m sorry,” Richie manages to get out.

“Don’t be, it’s okay,” Eddie tells him. Richie shakes his head, and Eddie holds him closer, rocking him a little bit, back and forth. Richie exhales, a shuddering sound, then inhales, just a little bit, like he’s about to speak. Eddie waits him out.

“Eddie, I need to tell you something,” Richie says softly. Eddie pulls back slightly so they can look at each other’s faces, but Richie looks away immediately, glancing out the window. The expression on his face is soft and sad; Eddie can’t help but reach out and touch the uninjured side of his face gently, avoiding a bruise on his jaw when he turns Richie’s head back towards him.

“You can tell me anything,” Eddie assures him. “It’s okay.”

“Please don’t hate me,” Richie says. “And let me— Let me finish before you say anything, okay?”

“Okay,” Eddie agrees, “but I could never hate you, Rich. I promise.”

Richie laughs dryly, humorlessly. After a long moment, he says, “Eddie, I love you.”

“I love you—”

“No,” Richie interrupts him. Eddie furrows his brow, his heart pounding again. “I told you, let me finish before you talk, you dipshit.” He shuts his eyes, exhales; Eddie’s terrified. When Richie opens his eyes again, he says, “Eds, I’m _in_ love with you. And I have been since I was a kid, and I still am now. I just— I know you’re married, and— Oh, I’m gay. I’m gay and I’m— I’m in love with you, but I’m just so happy you’re alive, I can’t— I can’t _not_ tell you.”

Richie pauses, but he’s clearly still going to keep talking. Eddie can only sit there, frozen in place, petrified. His hand is sweating and his mind is screeching to a screaming halt and he thinks he might be about to pass out.

“I don’t know if you—” Richie starts, then stops. “I don’t know. I don’t know what you want to do. Whatever you want.”

Now, Richie stops, and looks to Eddie expectantly. Eddie still can’t speak. His hand is shaking in his lap, where it’s curled up against his thigh in his pajamas. He’s married. To a woman. To Myra. He blew a guy in college. His name was Scott. Myra’s exactly like his mother. His mother had lied to him. Eddie forgot all of it. He hates his job. He doesn’t want to go back to New York. He has no idea what he’s supposed to do. He doesn’t know who he is or what his next move is. All he knows is that his brain is throwing a million thoughts at him at once, and Richie’s looking at him expectantly, and there’s no words in his mouth. There’s a cork in his throat, air filling his chest, but he can’t _speak._

“It’s— That’s okay,” Richie says. He’s visibly crestfallen, his eyes going wet and glassy again as his shoulders fall. “You don’t gotta say anything, Eds, I’m—”

“I’m married,” Eddie manages to say, sounding strangled. Richie looks away from him, back out the window. Eddie shivers and looks down at his fingers. “I— Richie, I, I don’t—”

“It’s totally okay,” Richie cuts him off. He turns to Eddie again, Eddie can see in his peripherals; he lifts his head and they make eye contact. Richie forces a smile onto his face that almost hurts worse than the wound on Eddie’s cheek does. “No, yeah, that’s cool. I didn’t— I didn’t expect anything from you, I totally just expected to just— Get it off my chest, you know?” He exhales, playfully dramatic, and says, “Big relief! Thanks, bud.”

“Richie—”

“No, no, it’s totally cool,” Richie interrupts again. “All good. Thanks for letting me express myself, Eds.”

Eddie’s heart is still pounding. His entire brain is screaming, but he doesn’t know why or what he wants or what he’s supposed to do now. All he knows is that Richie looks like he’s about to burst into tears, Eddie wants to scream at the top of his lungs, and Myra is on her way to Derry. This is arguably the worst moment of his entire life.

“My—” Eddie starts, then stops, his voice breaking. Richie looks at him, and tears start to slip down his cheeks when he sees Eddie close to crying, too. Eddie shakes his head, pushing himself back up to his feet. “My wife is on her way here. I need to— I should—”

“Yeah, okay,” Richie says. He looks pitiful and small in his hospital bed, even though he’s a few inches over six feet tall and has the broadest shoulders Eddie’s ever seen. He’s all pulled in on himself, casts and bandages and bruises and cuts. There’s a watery smile on his face, and he turns away as Eddie opens the hospital room door.

“I’ll be back soon,” Eddie tells him.

“Okay,” Richie says again, softly. Eddie lingers in the doorway, but Richie doesn’t look back at him. It takes him a minute but, finally, Eddie steps back out into the unit, closing the door behind himself. Ben and Bev come over to him, Bev asking what was wrong, and Eddie just shakes his head, pushing past them with his good arm to get back to his own room before he starts crying, too.

* * *

Richie and Eddie go through recovery together in the hospital, and neither of them say anything about Richie’s confession. Every day, Richie tries his best to forget the shell-shocked and horrified look on Eddie’s face when Richie had told him he was in love with him, but he’s not sure what he expected. Just because Eddie didn’t want him to die didn’t mean he loved him. He’s pretty stupid, in his own opinion, for saying anything, but he couldn’t _not_ say something. He doesn’t want to live his life all bottled up like that anymore. He can’t take it.

Myra shows up, and she’s so much like Sonia that Eddie makes furious eye contact with him and makes a slashing motion across his throat the second they meet, like he can tell that Richie’s got a thousand jokes about to fall off his tongue. Richie mimies zipping his lips and throwing away the key, and he silently endures Myra’s presence.

He grows to hate Myra. She’s short with Eddie, snappish and dismissive, babying him as much as she ignores him, and it’s infuriating. She’s terrible to Richie, too, though she mostly just pretends he and the other Losers don’t exist. For some reason, she seems to hate Richie most; then again, though, so did Sonia, for whatever reason. Eddie doesn’t have an answer for why that might be the case, why Myra might hate him, when Richie asks, but he averts his eyes and Richie thinks, _oh, you told her what I did._ He’s not sure if that’s true, but the thought puts a block of ice in the pit of his stomach, and he tells Eddie he has to go to sleep just to get Eddie out of his room so he can scream into his pillow in peace.

Eddie’s released first. He and Richie find a good prosthetic for him online, made exactly for him from a specialist in New York; Eddie promises to send pictures as soon as he has it. They linger together in Richie’s room before Eddie gives him a quick hug and leaves.

After that, the other Losers start having to trickle home, too. Bill’s job needs him back, and Bev needs to hire a divorce attorney to officially leave her husband; Ben just follows Bev as soon as she goes. All three of them apologize profusely to Richie, but he understands.

Stan’s wife Patty comes up to take him home, but she and Richie get along like old friends, so she insists they stay until he’s discharged, too. The two of them crash on Mike’s sofa bed at night before all three of them — Stan, Patty, _and_ Mike — come to visit Richie during the day. It’s the only thing that gets him through, most days.

His manager calls once while Richie’s in the hospital, and uses the time to drop him as a client. Richie takes it upon himself to be responsible for his own PR, now, so he texts the Losers group chat first before doing anything, because they deserve to be the first to know.

 _in case you haven’t heard already, i’m gay,_ Richie sends one night, after visiting hours are over, because he’s not sure what Eddie’s said or whom he’s said it to. All six of them reply with encouragement, even Eddie, who texts back **_We love you, Richie._ **

Richie locks the message on his phone, so it can’t be deleted, and then opens Twitter to officially come out by simply tweeting, _This is a coming out tweet, because I am gay._

“Lame,” Stan comments the next day, scrolling through the replies to Richie’s tweet. “It’s not even funny.”

“You’re such a dick,” Richie says, grinning. Patty squeezes his hand, smiling at him. Mike offers Richie a double thumbs-up.

“Proud of you!” Mike says, with such absurd enthusiasm that Richie just has to laugh. He hasn’t had friends this good since the last time he lost the Losers.

Eddie messages in the group chat, and he’ll occasionally text Richie separately. As time goes on, though — as Richie insists that everything remain as normal as possible — they text more often. Soon, they’re messaging each other consistently throughout the day, never really stopping or starting conversations; it’s more that they’re having one long, continuous dialogue, seemingly without any potential end. Richie loves it; at the same time, he’s terrified of it.

After a while longer, Richie starts dreading going back to his old life. Los Angeles sucks, and he doesn’t like anyone there; he lived in Chicago up until just a few years ago, but he doesn’t want to go back there, either. He doesn’t want to go to Seattle, or Boston, or Portland. All he wants is to follow the Losers to New York. Eddie and Beverly already live there, and Bill’s moving out there for his next project; Mike’s planning to follow Bill, once Richie’s out of the hospital, and Stan’s new job is just outside the city, so he and Patty are moving, too. Ben’s in upstate New York, moving down to live near Bev in the city.

All that leaves is Richie, with a house in Los Angeles and a heart in New York City.

“I think I want to move,” Richie tells Stan, two days before he’s scheduled to be discharged. Stan looks up from the book he’s been reading, removing his reading glasses to look at him properly.

“Then move,” Stan says. “Do you need the wheelchair?”

“No, I meant, like, my house,” Richie tells him. “I don’t want to live in L.A. when all of you are living in New York. It feels weird. I want to be near you guys.”

Stan looks him over, then marks his place in his novel with a bookmark. Setting both his glasses and the book aside on Richie’s tray table, he says, “It’s not weird. I get it.”

“You do?” Richie asks.

“Patty’s always said I’ve had a keen sense towards the right decision,” Stan tells him. “I always just somehow know.” He taps his fingernails against the cover of his book, then continues, “It feels right, to live together. Right?”

“Right.” Richie reaches out, and Stan meets him in the middle, taking his hand. “Will you help me?”

“Absolutely,” Stan says.

In the end, it takes Stan, Eddie, _and_ Beverly to get Richie an apartment that’s ready for him by the time he’s discharged from the hospital and cleared for flight. They do pull it off, though, and Stan and Patty accompany Richie on his plane to his brand-new, sight-unseen home. Both of Richie’s legs are still heavily casted, so he’s in a wheelchair instead of on crutches, but Stan’s pushing him while Patty leads them down the hallway of his new apartment building.

“Here we are,” Patty says, “237, this is you.”

Richie whistles when he sees the place, but then Ben and Bev jump out of the entryway to his kitchen, shouting _“Surprise!”_ so loudly that Richie shrieks in shock. Patty pats him on the hand.

“Welcome to New York,” Bev tells him, kissing on the cheek. Richie’s in tears, happier within thirty seconds in his fancy New York apartment than he was in years in his entire house in Los Angeles. “We’re so happy you’re home.”

Richie _feels_ at home, too. Seeing the Losers more frequently is doing wonders for him, especially since he’s starting to feel like Jimmy Stewart in _Rear Window,_ people-watching from his windows so aggressively that Mike has to encourage him to pick up a new hobby.

Over months, Richie heals, both physically and emotionally. His kneecaps take a few months, but they knit back together, and the bones of his ankles slowly knit back together, too. The bruising and swelling go down; his brain heals, externally. His shoulder heals into a gnarled mess of scar tissue, and he’s got one scar down the side of his face, too, where the rock tore his skin open from his temple down his cheek to his jawline.

Eddie heals, too. They meet up sometimes for physical therapy, workouts and jogging and all sorts of exercises that Eddie comes up with for them. Eddie’s arm and his face heal, too, and he gets used to his prosthetic arm slowly while Richie gets used to his new cane, a permanent fixture at the end of his arm, now.

Eddie heals in all sorts of ways. He divorces Myra before he even picks up his new prosthetic, and moves into his own place. He goes in to his boss to ask for a raise and comes out with a promotion to a position he’d actually been looking into potentially applying for. Eddie’s making leaps and bounds while Richie’s just trying to pull his bones back together and write some jokes.

They still don’t talk about Richie’s confession. Eddie doesn’t bring it up, so Richie never mentions it, happy to take his lead as long as Eddie keeps hanging out with him.

“It’s like you broke up,” Bev comments one Friday night, while she, Richie, Ben, and Stan are having one of their ice cream sundae movie nights together at Richie’s place. Richie keeps shifting while they watch their movies, his joints uncomfortable when he doesn’t move for too long, stiff and still healing up, but nobody says anything about it. He appreciates it more than he can even verbalize to himself.

“Eddie’s straight,” Richie says, around a mouthful of cherry ice cream. “And uninterested in me regardless. You should’ve seen his face when I told him, Bev.”

“You’ve said,” Bev replies, in that disbelieving tone she gets. “I still think you should talk to him about it.”

“It’s not a bad idea,” Ben adds.

“If you were brave enough to do it,” Stan says, “which, come on.”

“Your reverse psychology is _not_ going to work on me, Urine,” Richie shoots at him. He swallows his ice cream and savors the distraction of brain freeze. 

“Well, what if I set you up on a date, then?” Bev offers. “Just something to get your mind off Eddie. Maybe it’ll be a good thing to get the ball rolling on moving on from him, right?”

“The journey of a million miles begins with a single step,” Ben says.

“Shut the fuck up,” Stan says evenly. He eats a spoonful of whipped cream, his eyes glued on _Gone Girl._

Bev is true to her word and sets Richie up on a date for the very next day, right after he gets lunch with Eddie. It’s a coffee date, just a brief meet-up at three in the afternoon at a local cafe, but Richie’s nervous anyways. He tries out a bunch of different outfits with Bev before they settle on black pants, clinging to his legs, shiny black shoes and a dark red blazer over his white shirt, patterned with little red flowers and birds. When he spins, Beverly whistles, even though it takes him a few extra steps with the cane.

He goes to lunch with Eddie first, hopping into their usual booth at their favorite diner down the street. Eddie raises an eyebrow at him when he settles in.

“What’re you all dressed up for?” Eddie asks. Miranda brings over their regular coffee orders before they can even ask.

“I’ve got a coffee date after this,” Richie tells him. He looks up at Miranda and says, “Can I get the roast beef today?”

“Sure thing, Richie,” Miranda says. “How about you, Eddie?”

Eddie doesn’t say anything. Richie hands his menu up to Miranda and, when Eddie _still_ doesn’t speak, Richie glances over at him.

“You hungry, Eds?” Richie asks. Eddie blinks, looking surprised for a moment before he gathers himself.

“Yes,” he says, seemingly confused. “Uhh, can I get— can I get a chicken salad sandwich today?”

“It’s got walnuts and cranberries,” Miranda warns him, taking his menu. Richie and Eddie keep their eye contact.

“That’s fine,” Eddie agrees. Richie grins.

“Proud of you,” he tells him, taking a sip from his sweet, milk-white iced coffee. 

“Shut up,” Eddie says. Miranda leaves them there to put their orders in while Eddie frowns down at Richie’s blazer lapels. “Why are you dressing so nice for a coffee date?”

“Because I want people to like me, Eddie,” Richie tells him. “I don’t know if you could tell that from the _everything_ about me.”

Eddie huffs a laugh, taking a sip from his own creamy unsweetened hot espresso. “Do you know anything about this guy? Who is he? Where did Bev—”

“Can I get one question at a time, or is that too much to ask?” Richie laughs, looking down into his cup. He swirls the ice cubes around with his straw, then says, “I don’t really know anything about him. It’s a blind date.”

“What if he’s an ass?” Eddie demands. Richie looks up at him, one eyebrow raised.

“Then… I won’t see him again?” Richie answers. “It’s just a coffee date, Eds. It’s not a big deal.”

In spite of Richie’s words, and the fact that this is very much _not_ a big deal (except that it is, it _really_ is, because it’s the first time Richie’s ever tried to make a move to get over Eddie and he’s not handling it spectacularly), Eddie still looks angry. He barely touches his sandwich when it comes, silently stewing to himself. Richie picks at his fries before sighing loudly.

“Eddie, do you have a problem with me being gay?” Richie asks. Eddie looks up at him, the pissed-off expression on his face falling off to make way for a look of extreme concern, brows drawn together so adorably that Richie has to look away. His heart’s still pounding; he’s suddenly not hungry anymore.

“No, Richie, I— That’s not—” Eddie makes a frustrated noise, then drops his head down in his hand, yanking at his hair. He’s been letting his hair and beard grow out since his divorce; Richie thinks it’s a great look on him, tragically.

“Is it because—”

 _“No,”_ Eddie cuts him off, because he’s constantly afraid of discussing Richie’s confession. He never lets the subject come up, _never._

“Then what the fuck is your problem?” Richie asks. Eddie frowns at him, then shakes his head. He picks at the wrist joint of his prosthetic, glaring down at it like it offended him somehow. “I’m not gonna let you just be a freak about my dating life, Eds. I’m gay, I’m going to be dating dudes. You’re just gonna have to deal, man.”

Eddie’s scowl deepens, his face going all red and blotchy like it does when he’s pissed off. “I’m not mad that you’re dating men, you dickwad.”

“Then why _are_ you mad?” Richie asks.

“I—” Eddie starts to say, then stops. He shakes his head again. “I don’t fucking know.”

Richie picks up his sandwich and takes a bite, then says, around a half-chewed mouthful of roast beef, “What if he hates the scar on my face and I have to wear a mask forever like the Phantom of the Opera?”

Richie expects any number of responses, ranging from _who wouldn’t hate your face?_ to _chew with your mouth closed, you disgust me,_ to _his name was Erik, you uncultured dickbag,_ but, instead, Eddie’s angry expression evens out into a white-hot fury, and he says, under his breath, “Then he can go fuck himself.”

Richie sets his sandwich back down on the plate and looks at Eddie. Eddie refuses to lift his eyes to look back for a long moment; then, though, then he does, looking straight at Richie, a crease between his eyes.

“Eddie,” Richie manages to say, his heart jumping into his throat. Eddie’s eyes trace the scar on Richie’s face before tracking down the column of his throat to his chest, where it’s exposed by the undone top buttons of his shirt; there, they dart away. Richie feels more vulnerable than he has in a _while._ “What’re you—”

“I’m hanging out with Mike and Bill tonight,” Eddie tells him. “We’re— We’re going to get dinner, or something, I don’t know, Mike planned it.”

“Alright,” Richie says, feeling like he has whiplash from this conversation alone. Eddie’s looking down at his plate hard, like his sandwich has started yelling slurs at him. It just hurts that he’s very pointedly _not_ looking at Richie, and that he’s already changed the subject. “Bev said she wanted to hang out, maybe go somewhere. If you wanna come over, just text me.”

“Fine,” Eddie says. He shoves a bite of his side salad into his mouth. Richie just stares at him, bewildered, before he goes back to his own lunch.

* * *

“You didn’t _see him,”_ Eddie repeats, possibly for the fourth or fifth time now, as he paces across Bill and Mike’s living room, agitated. He feels like his blood is boiling as he makes another loop in the apartment’s little living space; Bill and Mike are sitting on the sofa, watching him like he’s a one-man show and they’re his bemused audience. “He’s _never_ gotten that dressed up.”

“Maybe that’s just how he dresses for dates,” Mike suggests. “It’s not like we’ve seen him go on a date ever.”

Eddie frowns at him. “He went on dates in high school.”

Bill and Mike frown right back at him. Bill slowly ventures to say, “No, he didn’t.”

Eddie tries to think back over their time in school and he finds, digging through his memories, that he can’t actually remember Richie going on any dates in high school. It’s jarring, that he’s never actually had to deal with this too much. Richie never expressed having interest in any particular person they knew, even though he mentioned that he had a crush once or twice.

Eddie remembers Richie looking at him so earnestly in the hospital and saying, _“Eds, I’m in love with you. And I have been since I was a kid, and I still am now.”_

“Fuck,” Eddie says. He stops and sits down in Mike’s plushy-soft armchair, dropping his head down into his hands, one flesh and one prosthetic against the overheated skin of his face. “I don’t know why I’m getting so worked up about this.”

He’s met with silence. When he lifts his head, frowning, looking for a response to his dramatics, Mike and Bill are looking at each other, and Bill is whispering furiously under his breath.

 _“Hey,”_ Eddie says sharply. The two of them look at him, caught, and he continues, “What’re you two fucking talking about?”

They exchange another look, and then Mike ventures, hesitantly, “Eddie, are you… Can you think of any reason this might be bothering you?”

Eddie frowns. “No. I don’t know. It’s just— I don’t know, it’s just— The _way_ he was— I don’t _know.”_

“Eds, why might Richie going on a date bother you?” Bill says, like he’s a teacher trying to guide Eddie into the correct answer. Eddie feels like there’s some invisible wall in between him and the response Bill wants from him.

“I don’t—” Eddie starts to say, then stops. “Just say whatever you want to fucking say, you dipshits, why are you being so fucking vague? It’s stupid.”

Bill rolls his eyes as Mike says, “Eddie, we can’t just tell you. You have to figure this one out on your own.”

Eddie has no idea what the fuck that means. He ends up with so much pent-up angry energy that he has to leave Bill and Mike’s place, because there’s not enough space for him to pace around and talk through this in their apartment. Instead, he just paces around his own, furiously trying to figure out what the fuck is wrong with him. In his incensed fervor, he grabs his phone and texts Richie, **_How’d your date go?_ **

_eh,_ Richie texts back. He’s a pretty speedy texter, when it comes to the Losers. _i think i was right about the face thing._

Eddie’s angry again, so quickly he feels his face flush as he types out, **_Then he’s a fucking idiot._ ** After a moment of hesitation, he remembers Richie’s offer from earlier, then sends, **_Do you want me to come over?_ **

_you can stop by before i go out with bev if you want,_ Richie replies. Eddie grabs his jacket and he’s already halfway out the door before he thinks to reply to Richie to let him know he’s on his way. It’s good, Eddie thinks, that they all live so near each other, just in case they need to help one another or get to each other quickly; it has nothing to do with how their skin crawls when they’re not near each other, or how Eddie feels like he’s going to throw up and die when he’s not in the same city Richie is.

Eddie has to stop to gather himself in the hallway outside Richie’s apartment door. He exhales, shaking out his shoulders, rolling his neck. He’s just lifted his hand and knocked once when Richie throws open the door, and he looks shocked to see Eddie standing there, his fist in the air.

“Eds!” Richie exclaims. Eddie’s mouth has already gone dry. His rage melts into a weird heat, settling deep and low inside of him as he looks up at Richie, and he has to _look up_ at Richie. He’s changed out of his coffee shop date clothes from earlier and put on a button-down patterned with dozens of rainbow dots, so tight it’s clinging to his arms and his chest, stretched across his shoulders. His long legs are covered in tight red jeans, but he’s still got his black boots on. Eddie looks up at his face, because he’s spent too long looking at his chest, and his heart is in his mouth. “That was quick.”

Eddie can’t answer, for a second, and his eyes drift back down to Richie’s shoulders again. After a beat, he realizes he wants to touch Richie, but he always wants to touch him. He has since they were kids. He and Richie touch, that’s nothing out of the ordinary. It’s just how it is, that Eddie wants to grab Richie by the shoulders and press their faces together and maybe hug him and hold him and it’s _possible_ he wants to kiss him—

Eddie’s brain screeches to a halt. He and Richie are still standing in Richie’s apartment doorway, staring at each other in silence. Richie looks confused, waiting for Eddie to say or do literally anything, but all Eddie can do is stare at him. His fucking _dick_ is getting hard, like he’s sixteen again and all confused about Richie taking his clothes off before they go swimming.

 _Ah,_ his brain helpfully supplies. _That’s what that was._

His aversion to sex with his ex-wife makes more sense, like this. His constant dwelling on Paul, a man whose face is burnt into his memories even though he really didn’t care for him as a person, makes a _lot_ more sense.

The way he wants to kiss Richie and keep him from going out on any more dates makes a tremendous amount of sense, abruptly, too, as does the comment Mike and Bill made about Eddie not realizing what’s actually bothering him.

He’s known for a while, he realizes. He’s never let himself think about it for too long, a passing understanding he didn’t want to have, but he knows it’s true.

“I, uhh,” Eddie says, then stops. He can’t say _I think I’m gay and in love with you,_ because that’s insane. He told Richie _months_ ago they couldn’t be together, when Richie…

Eddie wants to scream. The terrified fear and the recall of the time they’ve spent and that strange feeling deep in his chest — all the things that Eddie had felt, when Richie confessed to him that he was in love with him, they’d been signals. They were all _signs,_ signs that Eddie was in love with him, too. He was just too— too fucked up, too repressed and too afraid and too unsure to process any of it.

He’s not unsure now, but he’s still fucking terrified.

“Did you… need something?” Richie asks hesitantly. “Do you want to come in? You’re being weird. Are you sick? Are you going to _be_ sick?”

“No,” Eddie manages, because Richie talking is doing strange things to his stomach, after his shocking-but-not-shocking realization.

“Do you want to come in?” Richie asks. “You’re freaking me out, Eds. I don’t think you’ve ever been this quiet before in your life.”

“Sorry, I just— I just realized something,” Eddie tells him. Richie furrows his brow at him, but then he turns and heads back into his apartment, a silent invitation for Eddie to follow. All this really does is give Eddie a view of his broad back in his tight shirt and it gives him a feeling akin to a heart attack. At least, it’s what Eddie imagines a heart attack would feel like, and he’s spent a lot of time imagining that.

“Something good, I hope,” Richie says. He opens up his fridge and says, “You want anything?”

 _You,_ Eddie thinks desperately. He can’t even come up with a coherent answer; the first thing that comes out of his mouth is, “You look— You look good, Richie.”

Richie turns, his face half-lit by the bulb at the top of his refrigerator, and he looks confused. He turns, slightly, his hand still holding the fridge door open. After a beat, he opens his mouth, then closes it again. It takes him a second before he says, “Uh… Yeah, thanks, Spaghetti.”

The two of them keep looking at each other before a knock at the door and a key turning in the front lock makes them both jump. The balled-up knot of emotions in Eddie’s chest is finally starting to loosen. It’s only been getting tighter and tighter since he went back to Derry but, watching Richie go to let Bev in before she can unlock the door herself, Eddie finds that he’s finally starting to relax, even though he’s completely petrified. The realization is terrifying, but it’s still a _realization._ The not-knowing was the worst part.

“You want to come, Eddie?” Bev asks. Eddie snaps back into himself to find Bev and Richie both looking at him like he’s grown two heads, and he wonders how much of their conversation he missed while he was zoned out, having his gay revelation.

“No, I— I’m gonna go home, I think I’m coming down with something,” Eddie tells them. They both look confused — Richie, especially, looks completely bewildered — but Eddie says his goodbyes and leaves, only minutes after he arrived. He walks quickly back to his own apartment building, head down against the wind. When he finally gets back to his place, he’s not sure where to go; his legs bring him to his fire escape, and he climbs out, leaning over the alleyway.

“I’m gay,” Eddie says out loud. Nobody’s outside, and no one can hear him, but he laughs and starts to cry anyways, embarrassingly enough, tears spilling down his face when he shouts, _“I’m gay!”_

“Good for you!” someone shouts back from the street. Eddie laughs, wiping at his face. It takes him a minute to calm down enough to go inside but, when he does, he realizes he needs to tell people. The Losers, especially, but Richie, in particular, because he’s—

He’s in love with Richie, and he told Richie he _wasn’t—_ Or, at least, he implied it and then never brought it up again, too terrified to say anything and have those weird knotted feelings come bubbling back up. Implying it, though, Eddie thinks, is just as bad as saying it, because Richie believes it and he went on a _date_ today and now he’s going out with _Bev_ to potentially get _another date,_ looking _amazing—_

Eddie snatches up his phone and texts Richie, **_What are you doing tomorrow night?_ **

Despite the fact that Richie must be either in his Lyft on the way out or has actually made it into the bar he and Bev were going to by now, he replies within a minute, _nothing, why? wanna hang?_

 **_Yes, I have to talk to you about something. Nothing bad,_ **Eddie replies, because they both have anxiety and he knows Richie will overthink it if he doesn’t say that, and he doesn’t need Richie panicking and bailing because he thinks Eddie’s going to yell at him.

 _sounds good, you can come over whenever you want,_ Richie sends back.

 **_I’ll be there at two,_ ** Eddie sends, and then immediately regrets it, because he now has a time and date for his confession while having literally _no_ plan.

 _it’s a date,_ Richie replies. Eddie’s heart kicks up into double-time; it takes everything he has not to fling his phone at the wall out of sheer panic. He’s been in love with Richie since they were kids, and he couldn’t wait an entire fucking day to figure out how to tell him. He just _had_ to text him right away.

He wants to do something big, he realizes. He’s not sure Richie will believe him otherwise, after his own botched confession and the intervening months of not discussing what happened _at all._ Eddie also finds he wants to do something big because Richie _deserves_ something big; from what he’s said, he’s never had a relationship where the guy he was with did something big or nice for him, and Eddie wants to be the person who does that, maybe.

Also, he realizes, he wants Richie to love him still. He’s terrified he fucked up, that Richie has moved on and will say _thanks but no thanks, I’ve already moved on,_ and Eddie will have to live the rest of his life knowing he fucked _himself_ over and destroyed his only true chance at happiness just by being so fucking repressed he couldn’t see straight. Or, could _only_ see straight, he guesses.

Eddie quickly discovers that he’s not the most creative type. Richie’s the grand-gesture type, and Eddie tends to lay low, and that means he can’t text the _one person_ who could help him do this, because that’s also the _one person_ this is all for. All of his own ideas for grand ways to tell Richie he’s in love with him are things he saw in comic books, and none of them are practical enough for him to do in real life. Instead, he turns to Google, which keeps suggesting _creative proposal ideas_ and making Eddie’s hand sweat.

Finally, he finds a good website and scrolls through the listicle, trying to find an entry with a suggestion that could actually work for _him,_ specifically. The website is a helpful _How to Tell Someone You Love Them_ site, and the very first entry says _Be sure of your feelings._

Eddie looks into himself. He’s sure of his feelings, so he reads the next entry: _Find a private space._ He looks around his apartment; it’s private, but it’s not, like, _special._ He huffs, then starts Googling frantically.

* * *

Richie feels like shit, when he wakes up the next morning. It’s a Sunday, thank fuck, because that means he’s not expected to even function until at least noon, but he doesn’t want to get out of bed at _all._ He remembers that Eddie will come over at two o’clock, and he groans, because that means he needs to function. His head and his stomach both hurt, but he’s also just sad.

When he forces himself out of bed and into his bathroom, he can only glare at himself in the mirror over the sink. His coffee date the day before had been a shitshow, since the guy kept getting distracted by the scar down Richie’s face; the guy he’d spent most of his time with the night before ended up being a fucking mess, too, when he tried to get Richie to blow him in the bathroom and ended up yelling at him and storming out. Richie feels adrift and unloved; he turns himself away from the mirror and makes himself get in the shower instead.

Richie had been alone before he went back to Derry, but now he’s painfully aware of how lonely he _really_ is. Before, he’d been miserable, but it’d just been how life was. That’s just what it was. There was nothing he could do, because he was meant to be alone and he always had been and that was that. Now, though, he’s got the Losers back, and he knows what it’s like to be _not_ alone. They’re all so happy, though — Ben and Bev have each other, and Mike and Bill, and Patty and Stan. Eddie’s his best friend, but he told him he was in love with him and Eddie stopped fucking functioning, so that’s not an option. All Richie wants is to be happy with Eddie like his friends are happy with each other, and he can’t fucking have that, but the attempts he’s made to move _past_ that have just been miserable, and he can’t— He’s just _exhausted._ This is too much, too _much,_ he’s just sick of being alone.

By the time he’s slogged through showering, throwing up, getting dressed, finding his cane where he’d flung it the night before, and making the strongest coffee his stomach can handle, it’s already nearly two. He picks up his phone and texts Eddie, _still coming over?_

 **_If that’s okay,_ **Eddie replies within seconds. Richie frowns down at his phone as he pours milk into his mug.

 _why wouldn’t it be?_ he sends back.

 **_I don’t know,_ ** Eddie sends. **_Just in case._ ** Then, a beat, and a third message. **_Can I come now?_ **

Richie looks at himself in the reflection off the broad side of his toaster. After a beat, he tries smoothing his hair down with his fingers before texting back, _whenever’s fine, eds, you know you’re welcome 24/7. come whenever you want._

There’s a knock at his front door as soon as he sends the text. Richie laughs out loud before jogging over to open up his door and, sure as shit, Eddie’s standing on the other side, a flush spread red across his freckled cheeks. He looks up at Richie, looking so fucking handsome that Richie wants to scream, and says, “Hi, Rich.”

“Morning, Spaghetti,” Richie says, giving Eddie a half-hug with his cane in one hand and his coffee mug in the other. Eddie clings tightly to him, though, tighter than he has in a while, so Richie turns his face into his hair and says, “You alright?”

Eddie jerks backwards, releasing him, and says, “No, no, yeah, I’m— I’m good. Are you?”

“Am I what?” Richie asks. He backs off, heads back to his kitchen and lets Eddie follow at his own pace. Once they’re in there, though, and Richie takes a seat on a stool at his kitchen island, Eddie doesn’t sit down and start picking at the fruit in the bowl like he normally does, admonishing him for getting fruit for show and then letting it rot every time. Instead, he just paces around near the counter, looking like he’s vibrating. Richie watches him, feeling tired just watching him. Eddie hasn’t answered his question, so he says, “Uhh, Eds?”

“What?” Eddie asks. He shakes his head, then says, “Oh, I meant— Are you good? You alright? How are you, how was your night?”

“One question at a time, man,” Richie murmurs. He rubs at his face and says, “My night was a shitshow. Thanks, though.”

“Oh.” Eddie’s frowning, when Richie looks up at him. Before Richie can ask what’s wrong, Eddie says, “What happened? Did something happen? Well, I mean, obviously _something_ happened, but what did—”

“Eds, you _gotta_ slow down, you’re freaking me out,” Richie tells him, because he’s starting to get antsy. Eddie clearly wants to say or do _something_ that he’s not doing, and his raw, barely-contained energy feels like a bomb about to go off. Richie’s suddenly, _viscerally_ certain that Eddie’s about to tell him he’s too uncomfortable to keep hanging out like this, so he stands, his stool screeching backwards across the kitchen tile.

“Sorry,” Eddie says, as Richie looks at him. Richie grabs his cane and goes to set his mug in the sink, but Eddie stops him, standing right in front of him.

“Uhh,” Richie says, feeling less than intelligent. “Sorry for what?”

“Freaking you out,” Eddie tells him. He hesitates, then says, “Can we go for a walk?”

Richie raises an eyebrow, then looks out the window. It’s pouring fucking buckets outside, so he looks back to Eddie, his eyebrow still up, and asks, “You want to… go for a walk?”

“Yeah, to like, the Brooklyn Bridge Park, maybe,” Eddie suggests. Richie frowns again. “If you want. You can say no.”

“It’s pissing rain, Eddie,” Richie says. It doesn’t really bother him to go out in the rain if Eddie really wants to, because he owns a jacket and an umbrella, but Eddie tends to avoid rain like the plague so he doesn’t catch a cold. This is all just… so unsettlingly out of character. “Are you feeling okay? Are you sick? You’re not dying, are you?”

“No, I’m not fucking _dying,_ Richie, I just want to go for a walk,” Eddie snaps, which is far more familiar territory than his peculiar and intense energy. Richie sets his mug down on the counter.

“We can if you want, but you hate going out in the rain,” Richie says. “Whatever you’ve got to say, Eds, you can say it here. You don’t have to take me outside like I’m Ol’ Yeller and shoot me out back.”

Eddie frowns up at him. “What the fuck are you talking about, why would I shoot you?”

“I don’t mean _literally_ shoot me, dickbag.” Richie backs off, the _thumps_ of his cane as he heads back to his seat at the island the only noise in his quiet kitchen.

Eddie looks back out the window. He looks angry, abruptly, eyebrows pulling together, forehead wrinkling up as he glares out at the storm. Thunder crashes, and Eddie makes a frustrated noise before looking back to Richie. “Well, I— What— What were you going to do today? Do you have plans?”

Richie shrugs. “You’re looking at ‘em. Last night sucked, I don’t want to do anything.”

“Alright.” Eddie looks down, seemingly thinking for a second, before he says, “Well, what if we— We can get takeout and put on a movie instead, how’s that?”

It sounds like everything Richie wants and everything he fears most. He would love, more than anything, for him and Eddie to sit on the couch and eat delivery together in this storm, watching horror movies in the lightning-broken darkness, maybe making out when they were done with their late lunch. He knows, though, that the takeout-and-a-movie suggestion, just like his let’s-go-for-a-walk suggestion, is just Eddie trying to find the correct venue to tell Richie to fuck off and stop fucking irritating him every second of the day.

Richie clears his throat and he’s mortified when his voice cracks a little as he does it. He has to make himself look away from Eddie’s intensely curious expression when he says, “Look, Eddie, you don’t have to this whole— the whole thing, whatever. You could’ve just called.” Eddie doesn’t answer, but Richie can’t bring himself to look up. Instead, he just stares down at his hands as he says, “I’m really sorry. I’ve been trying to be better about it but I’m still fucking it up and I get it if you don’t want to hang out with me anymore. But when I’m— If I do better, maybe you can think about letting me hang out again or something? If I work on it?”

Richie’s heart is pounding, desperate for any sort of opening that Eddie might give him so he doesn’t lose everything in one fell swoop. Eddie _still_ doesn’t respond, and the not-knowing eats at him so aggressively that it ends up being worse _not_ to look, so Richie lifts his head. When he makes eye contact with Eddie, though, he’s confused. Eddie doesn’t even look angry, or relieved, like Richie assumed he might; instead, he looks weirdly _sad._

“Richie,” Eddie says softly. He comes around the island to stand next to him, his prosthetic hand resting on the countertop as he looks right at Richie, seemingly like he could see straight through his eyes and into his brain. Richie hopes, in the back of his head, that Eddie can’t read thoughts or anything like that, because he’d be fucked. Then again, the shocked look on Eddie’s face when Richie had confessed his love for him didn’t imply that Eddie had been able to read Richie’s thoughts when they were kids, so he’s probably good.

“I’m really sorry, Eddie,” Richie tells him. “I’ve been trying to do better.”

Eddie reaches up and cups Richie’s face in his hand, his fingertips brushing the jagged scar down his cheek, and Richie’s heart trips over itself, flipping before it rockets into his mouth; Richie’s got whiplash so aggressive he’s almost nauseous, looking at the confusingly tender yet heartbroken expression on Eddie’s face. He feels like he’d been going down stairs and missed a step; it’s that swooping feeling in his stomach that he’s missed something important, and now he’s going to get fucked over because of it, unless someone catches him.

“You don’t need to do better,” Eddie tells him. “You’re not doing anything wrong. Why the fuck would you think you’re doing something wrong, what in the hell are you talking about?”

Richie swallows. With him sitting like this, and Eddie standing, they’re of a height, looking right into each other’s eyes. Richie forces himself to say, “You— don’t want to be my friend anymore. Right? I get it—”

“Richie, _no,”_ Eddie cuts him off, looking horrified. “That’s— I would _never—_ Richie— What in the _fuck_ is _wrong with you?”_

Richie blinks down at him, now feeling even further out of his depth because he has no _idea_ what this conversation could _possibly_ be about if it’s not about Richie being so stupid in love with Eddie that he ruined their friendship. “Wh— I don’t know. I just— I thought—”

“You _thought_ wrong,” Eddie snaps. He shakes his head, looking down for a second as he says, “Fuck, I didn’t even— _Fuck!”_

“Eds?” Richie says carefully. “Are you feeling okay? You’re not, like, drunk, right? Do you have a fever?”

“No!” Eddie exclaims. He drops Richie’s face and backs off; Richie misses his warm touch on his scarred cheek, but he’s relieved that he can think straight again. “No, I’m not fucking _sick_ or _drunk,_ Richie, I’m trying to— I have to tell you something.”

“Then tell me,” Richie says, his palms sweating. His skin all feels like it’s stretched too tight over his bones, and he feels like he might throw up again. “Don’t— Don’t take me to the fucking park, Eddie, you’ve already built this up too much, just tell me. Are you moving? Are you—” A horrible realization hits him, and he asks, choked, “Fuck, are you seeing someone?”

Eddie does an almost comedic double-take, finally looking at Richie again to say, “Will you fucking _stop guessing?_ No, I’m not fucking moving and I am _not_ seeing anyone, holy shit—”

“Because if you did,” Richie interrupts him, “it’s fine. I know that I’m kind of a lot, so I can totally just— I’ll totally just back off and give you your space with her so you can—”

“Richie,” Eddie cuts him off.

“I didn’t even think of—”

 _“Richie,”_ Eddie says again, but Richie’s spiralling, his brain buzzing and his hands shaking and he’s almost crying, his entire brain and chest imploding all at once.

“I just—” Richie says, then exhales shakily and manages, “I never meant—”

“I’m gay,” Eddie blurts out.

“I didn’t even want to— What?” Richie asks. His screaming brain screeches to a halt, then immediately melts into a complete lack of cohesive thought, a syrupy mess that drips down his spine and leaves his head completely empty.

“I’m gay,” Eddie repeats. Richie starts to get genuinely nervous he’ll pass out; the spot on the back of his head where he banged it on the rock in the sewers after the Deadlights is sending lightning-sharp pains through the rest of his head as he tries to process what Eddie’s saying to him through his hangover.

“I— Okay,” Richie manages. “I— Yeah. Alright. I’m— I’m so glad you told me, Eddie, I—”

“And I’m in love with you,” Eddie interrupts him, talking loudly right over the end of Richie’s babbled reassurances. Richie stares hard at him, the words hitting him in the face like Eddie just slapped him. He blinks, and his vision fuzzes. Eddie frowns. “Richie?”

“Shit,” Richie manages, before he loses consciousness.

* * *

It feels like no time at all passes between that and his eyes blinking open, but he’s not standing up anymore, once he processes what he’s seeing. He’s flat on his back, on the ground, looking up at Eddie, who’s got Richie’s face tightly held between his hands, the metal of the prosthetic biting into his unscarred cheek.

“Oh, thank fuck,” Eddie says breathlessly. He clutches Richie close, hugging him tightly as he says, _“Never_ fucking do that to me again, holy fuck, what is _wrong_ with you—”

Richie pulls back, cutting Eddie off to demand, “What the _fuck_ did you say to me?”

“Richie,” Eddie says, “You just fucking— You just _passed out_ on your kitchen floor, let me call an ambulance—”

“I don’t need an ambulance!” Richie exclaims. “Just fucking— What did—”

“I’m in love with you,” Eddie repeats. The blood roars in Richie’s ears, and Eddie grabs his shoulder in his hand. “Richie, I swear to God—”

“No, I’m good, I just— It’s just that that’s—” Richie exhales, then says, “That’s what I thought you said.”

The two of them stare at each other, the silence so thick it’s choking Richie, before Eddie says, “I— I’m sorry.”

“What the fuck are you sorry for?” Richie asks. His heart’s starting to race again, thudding against his rib cage. He tries to tell himself not to get his hopes up, in case this is a coma dream or a Deadlights-induced vision or maybe even the afterlife. His hopes are already sky-high, though; he’s always jumped on every scrap Eddie could give him.

“Because I—” Eddie starts, then stops. He takes a deep breath, then offers Richie his hand. “Get up, for the love of God, stop laying on the floor.”

Richie takes his hand and gets hoisted to his feet before Eddie drags him over to his sofa in the adjoined living room. He sits Richie down, takes his cane and sets it out of his reach so he can’t fiddle with it while they talk, and then drops his hand into his lap, sighing.

“You okay?” Richie asks. “Your revelation hasn’t killed you, has it? Or are you going insane right now because of it? Is that what this is?”

“I’m sorry because I didn’t tell you I loved you, too,” Eddie tells him, like Richie hasn’t even said anything. The only indication Eddie heard him at all is the little smile pulling at one corner of his mouth as he stares down at his fingers. “When you told me, I— I don’t know. I married Myra right out of college and anytime I’ve had any— any thoughts, about— about guys, or whatever, I just remind myself I’m married. It doesn’t matter, because I’m married.”

They’re quiet for a second before Richie says, “You’re not married now,” braver than he thinks he’s ever been in his life. Every word out of Eddie’s mouth is better than the best music ever written, the greatest speeches ever made. If it’s a dream, Richie doesn’t ever want to wake up, but it _feels_ real, in a way nothing has since he left Derry when he was still just a kid.

“No,” Eddie says. He looks up at Richie again, _finally,_ with those big dark doe eyes of his and says, “No, I’m not married now.”

They keep staring at each other.

“And I didn’t know,” Eddie continues, after a beat, “back then. When you told me. I hadn’t thought about it since we were kids, not really, but then— I don’t know, you told me you loved me and it felt like my whole life imploded.”

“Thanks,” Richie says, aiming for humorously sarcastic and landing on choked surprise. Eddie doesn’t break stride, thank fuck.

“It was like everything I knew was fucked,” Eddie says. “I suddenly couldn’t— I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was like a dam burst. I couldn’t be married to her anymore, I just— I couldn’t. And then when I— When I spend time with _you,_ I didn’t— And I was so _fucking_ jealous, seeing how good you looked to go on dates with some other fucking guys, guys who aren’t me, and I don’t— I just—” Eddie exhales again, trying to reel himself back in. “Richie, I’ve been in love with you since I was a kid. I’ve never loved anyone like I love you. I didn’t know it was the way I’m supposed to love someone until it was too late, but now, I— I had to tell you. Even if I lost my chance. Which would be fine because I said no last time. Well, I didn’t say—”

Richie swoops in, taking Eddie’s face in his hands and kissing him so softly, so chastely, close-mouthed, a gentle press where Eddie’s top lip fits in between both of Richie’s; Eddie makes a startled noise before he tips his head and opens his mouth, his tongue crashing through Richie’s lips and teeth to turn the kiss dirty _real_ fucking fast. Richie jerks back, looking down at Eddie with what he can only assume is a comically shocked expression.

“Please tell me you’re sure about this,” Richie begs, sounding strained even to his own ears. Now that he’s kissed Eddie once, he sort of gets what Eddie’s talking about with the whole dam-breaking, overflowing-flooding thing. He’s itching to get his hands back on Eddie so badly that he’s _twitching._

“I’m so fucking sure,” Eddie tells him. “I was going to take you to the park and make a big gesture to—”

Richie doesn’t hear what the end of the sentence is, because the idea that _Eddie fucking Kaspbrak_ tried to plan a _big gesture_ to fucking tell him he’s _in love with him—_ Richie’s starting to think he made a wish on a monkey’s paw or some shit, or that Eddie’s possessed—

Richie scrambles to his feet, separating himself and Eddie so violently that Eddie looks almost hurt by it as Richie backs away from the sofa. He nearly trips backwards over his coffee table, but catches himself at the last second before he can fall ass-over-teakettle to the ground again.

“Fuck off, you’re fucking It,” Richie spits at him. He turns to try and find any sort of weapon to use against It, because _obviously_ that’s what going on here, he feels fucking _stupid_ for thinking otherwise, but then he realizes Eddie— possibly not Eddie, possibly It, Richie’s still deciding— hasn’t moved. He’s still sitting on the couch, staring up at Richie with an expression that might be indecipherable on anyone else, but Richie _knows_ Eddie. He’s sad.

“Richie,” Eddie says softly. He holds out his hand, but Richie doesn’t move. “I promise, I _promise,_ it’s me. I’m so sorry, Richie.”

It starts to sink in, finally, a little bit. Richie looks down at Eddie and thinks, _Of course you’re really Eddie,_ because he just— He knows. When he’s thinking clearly and not panicking, he _knows_ this is the real Eddie. He can just tell. It’s all so— so _much,_ the idea that Eddie’s spent the last few months processing his homosexuality and his big fucking gay crush on Richie, and it’s sent Richie’s entire world fucking spinning and hurtling through space and time itself.

Then, he realizes _oh shit, this is real,_ and it sinks in fully, and he bursts into tears.

“Holy fucking shit, Richie,” Eddie says, jumping to his feet and going over to pull Richie into a tight hug. Richie embraces him back, clinging to him like he’s the only thing keeping him upright, because he _is._ “Jesus, if I’d have known you’d fucking freak out like this, I would’ve done it in a hospital.”

“You really love me?” Richie asks through his tears. Eddie pulls back and cups Richie’s face in his hand again.

“I really love you, Richie,” he tells him. There’s a little crease, between his eyebrows, and he starts to ask, “You love me, too, ri—”

“Yes,” Richie cuts him off, tears finally slowing and coming to a stop as he speaks, desperate to make sure Eddie _gets it,_ that he’ll _never_ stop loving him. “Yes, I’m so stupid fucking in love with you, I tried to get over you and I fucking _can’t—”_

“Thank God,” Eddie says, and kisses him again, just as deep and dirty as the last one. He digs his hand into the hair at the back of Richie’s skull, pulls his head in so he can kiss him as hard as he can, stretching up on his toes to meet Richie’s kiss properly. Richie, for his part, drops his hands to Eddie’s hips and _tugs,_ until they’re flush against each other, just on instinct. Eddie groans into his mouth, his head dropping down until his forehead is pressed to Richie’s soft t-shirt over his scarred shoulder. He kisses there, absently, and Richie’s half-hard already.

“Can we have sex?” Richie asks. Eddie bursts into laughter, which just makes Richie grin before he’s laughing too.

“Yes, we can have sex,” Eddie answers. He lifts his head and says, their faces centimeters apart, “Can we go on a date?”

“We can do literally anything you want,” Richie tells him.

“Can I say you’re my boyfriend?” Eddie asks, which is a question better suited to them at fourteen than forty, but it makes Richie smile like a fucking dumbass all the same, because it’s fucking _Eddie_ asking it.

“Yeah,” Richie says, aiming for chill and coming out choked. He clears his throat, then says, “That’d be cool.”

Eddie looks up at him, his eyes flicking back and forth between Richie’s. After a long moment of them just looking at each other — a moment Richie’s wanted for so long, a moment where’s he allowed to look at Eddie as long as he wants — he smiles. His whole face breaks open, when he smiles like that; Richie hasn’t seen him do it since they were kids, that big wide-open happiness that Eddie rarely ever lets himself feel. Richie swears, in that moment, to make sure Eddie smiles like that _at least_ once a day for the rest of their lives.

“Maybe someday I can say you’re my husband,” Eddie says. It’s the last fucking straw — not just what he’s said, but how he’s _said it,_ soft and sweet and like it doesn’t fucking _mean everything._ In the next second, though, his smile turns into a shit-eating grin, and he says, “Oh, you fucking like that idea, don’t you?”

“What?” Richie asks dumbly, just as Eddie rolls his hips up into Richie’s, his thigh pressing over the hard line of Richie’s cock through his sweatpants. Richie makes a choked sound involuntarily. “Y— I mean, yeah—”

“I love you,” Eddie tells him again. Richie ducks his head back down to kiss him again, because he _has_ to, for that. Eddie pulls back to yank Richie’s glasses off his face, dropping them on the coffee table before he’s yanking him in again, his fingers curled tightly in Richie’s t-shirt, right over his heart, to keep him in place. When he pulls back, he says, “I’m so fucking in love with you, Richie, it gives me a fucking stomachache. I’m going to get a fucking _ulcer,_ I love you so much.”

“Fucking shit,” Richie manages. The world’s a little blurry, when he opens his eyes without his glasses on, but he can still see Eddie, especially this close up. He’s painfully hard now, going from zero to sixty with Eddie fucking Kaspbrak all over him like this, but he gets himself to say, “Do you want to do this here, or—”

“No, let’s go to your fucking bedroom,” Eddie tells him, and Richie all but drags him down the hallway by his wrist to his bedroom. Eddie spins them around once they’re actually in there, kicking Richie’s door shut and knocking his cane aside so he can sit him down on the edge of the bed. Richie looks up at him, eyes wide, bewildered.

“You’re so fucking hot,” Richie manages to say. Eddie tugs his shirt up over his head one-handed and tosses it aside before ducking down to kiss Richie again. Richie’s helped Eddie get his prosthetic on and off countless times, but, when his hands go to the straps over the fitted end of the arm, Eddie jerks back again. Richie reaches up, slides his hand over Eddie’s prosthetic arm as he asks, “Can I take this off, or do you want it on?”

Eddie hesitates, then says, “You can take it— I want you. To take it. Off, I mean.”

Richie’s breath catches in his chest at the fucking trust in Eddie’s voice, at the fucking _look_ on his face, making his heart throb as much as his dick is. Richie pulls back completely to separate the buckles of the straps that lace up Eddie’s arm; once they’re all loosened, he gently tugs the end of Eddie’s upper arm out of the fitted end of the prosthetic, then hands the limb over. Eddie takes it and sets it aside before returning to Richie, fitting himself in between his knees. Richie just tips his head back and lets Eddie’s fingers slide down his scarred cheek.

“I love you,” Eddie says again, deep from inside his chest. Richie smiles.

“I love you, too, Eds,” Richie tells him. Eddie ducks down to kiss him again, pushing Richie onto his back on the mattress and climbing over him as he does. He settles in Richie’s lap, grinding down over his dick, and Richie gasps, grabbing his hips again.

“Scoot back,” Eddie tells him, so Richie does, pushing himself backwards on the bed until his back hits the pillows at the headboard and Eddie’s in his lap again, kissing him like he needs the air out of _Richie’s_ lungs, _specifically,_ to breathe, or he’ll die. It takes a few moments, for Eddie to pull back again, but when he does, it’s to rip Richie’s t-shirt off over his head and start in on his throat, biting a mark there so hard that Richie yelps. “Fuck, I’m sor—”

“No, no, it’s good,” Richie tells him breathlessly. “Do it again, do that—”

Eddie bites him again, then licks the spot he’s bitten, his tongue and lips soothing the indentations Eddie’s teeth pierced into his skin. Richie exhales, a shuddering sound that shivers up his spine and out of his mouth. The next beat of his heart has Eddie reaching in between them, yanking the button of his pants open and tugging them down. When they separate, Richie all but tears his own sweatpants off, leaving himself naked underneath Eddie.

“You weren’t wearing fucking underwear?” Eddie demands, but Richie doesn’t have time to answer before Eddie’s kissing him again, trying to keep their mouths connected while he pulls his own underwear down and off, throwing it over the side of the bed. They’re both left completely naked, and neither of them moves, for a second; after that second, though, Eddie rolls his hips again, experimental, and their dicks drag together, and Richie makes a sound he never thought he’d make in front of another human person before.

Eddie dips his head down, kisses the gnarled mess of scar tissue that is Richie’s right shoulder and collarbone, then pushes Richie back so he’s laying flat. He leans over the bed for something, Richie can’t see what, but when he sits back, he’s throwing his pants aside again and dropping a travel bottle of lube and a wrapped condom on Richie’s chest.

“Did you bring this with you?” Richie asks, because they’re not brands he’s familiar with. Eddie’s blush starts on his chest and spreads up his face, a deep, rich red flooding his chest and flushing up over his neck and his cheeks. Richie wants to taste it, so he does, pulling Eddie in so he can get his mouth on the hot skin.

“Yes,” Eddie says, though Richie’s not sure if it’s in answer to his question or in response to his actions. Either way, he keeps kissing him, dropping his head to make a path across his collarbone to his chest, and Eddie shivers. He reaches between them, snatching up the lube and shoving the condom aside onto the mattress. Richie’s not sure what he expected, but it’s not surprising to him that Eddie takes control, snapping open the lube and looking expectantly to Richie.

“What?” Richie asks.

“Hold out your hand, dumbass,” Eddie tells him. “I don’t have enough fucking fingers to hold the lube _and_ use it, so come _on.”_

Richie holds out his hands as instructed, cupped together, and Eddie spills the lube into it. He shifts, lifting himself up a little bit so Richie can reach down in between them with better access to finger Eddie open; he’s so fucking on the ball that it makes Richie’s brain white out for a second. It’s only a second, though, because he’s doing the most important thing he’s ever done, which is fucking Eddie Kaspbrak, so he focuses. He warms the lube up between his hands before he starts to slip one finger into him.

“Holy fuck,” Eddie says, when Richie’s only to the first knuckle.

“I’m assuming you haven’t done this before,” Richie comments. Eddie shakes his head.

“I have,” he says. He shifts, pushing Richie in a little deeper with the movement until he slips to the second knuckle. Richie works on slowly moving, trying to get his middle finger in so he can start scissoring him open. It’s then that Eddie says, _“Fuck,_ I didn’t— I’ve done this to myself and I think I was thinking about you, even when I didn’t really remember you—”

“Oh, _fuck,_ Eddie,” Richie groans, breathless, surging up to kiss him again as he gets his second finger in. Eddie makes a sound deep in his chest before he inhales deeply, his muscles all relaxing as he settles back down on Richie’s lap again, squirming a bit. It’s all the prompting Richie needs, really, to finger-fuck him open until he’s ready for a third finger.

“Do four,” Eddie tells him, when Richie starts to remove his fingers. He looks up at him with an eyebrow raised. Eddie makes a soft little sound when Richie shifts again, then says, “Your cock is fucking huge, dude, do four—”

“Aye-aye,” Richie says, and does as he’s told, trying not to feel too proud of himself after hearing the words _your cock is fucking huge_ come out of Eddie’s mouth. It’s only when Eddie is whimpering above him, a flushed mess of limbs and breathy sounds, that Richie pulls his hand out completely and tears the condom open. Eddie takes the condom from him and rolls it down for him with one hand, smoothing it down over Richie’s sensitive skin; it takes everything Richie has not to buck up into him as he does it.

That seems to be the end of Eddie’s self-restraint, though, because he leaves it to Richie to slick himself in lube and line them up. Eddie puts his hand on Richie’s shoulder and positions himself, then slowly sinks down, taking his sweet fucking time while Richie keeps his hands on Eddie’s hips and tries desperately not to thrust up into him. He’s all fucking wet heat, warm and slick and just so fucking _tight_ that Richie could cry.

Eddie tips his head back when he bottoms out, a shuddering sigh reverberating out of his chest when their skin touches. They don’t move for a long moment before Eddie shifts, rolling his hips so Richie moves inside of him, and then they’re fucking _off._ Eddie’s hand slams down next to Richie’s amongst the pillows, and he rides him for everything he’s worth. Richie can only hold Eddie’s hips and try not to cum _instantly_ from the way Eddie’s fucking himself on Richie’s cock like this, like it’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to him.

“Holy _fuck, Richie,”_ Eddie manages, broken and strong and desperate. Richie starts meeting his thrusts down with his own thrusts up, and then they find a rhythm _together,_ and Eddie’s fucking right if that’s what he’s thinking— this is the _greatest_ thing that’s ever happened in the history of _forever,_ and it doesn’t matter that Richie’s forty or that he’s had a dozen people ride his dick in his life. None of that matters, because _Eddie fucking Kaspbrak_ is the one riding him right now, and Richie can’t last, not like that.

“I’m so close,” Richie tells him. Eddie groans, drops his head down to kiss Richie again. “Fuck, Eds, I’m—”

“Go ahead,” Eddie says, like he’s giving him fucking _permission._ “I want to feel it, come on—”

That’s it, that’s all Richie needs before he’s coming. His vision goes white, his whole body is warm and unfurling in an explosive, nuclear-hot fashion, but he manages to reach out and wrap his fingers around Eddie’s dick anyways. He’s still slick from the lube, and Eddie’s clearly on the edge himself; it only takes a few slippery tugs before Eddie’s biting an expletive into the scar on Richie’s shoulder and covering both of their chests with cum.

Eddie’s chest is heaving when he finally comes back into his own head enough to remove his teeth from Richie’s skin and pull back slightly. He shifts, frowning a little, and it takes the both of them maneuvering _very_ carefully for Eddie to slip off of him without one or both of them crying out. In the end, they fail, and Richie makes a soft whimpering sound at the feeling of Eddie stretched around his oversensitive cock, but Eddie kisses the sound out of his mouth, so it’s worth it.

“Are you sure this is okay?” Richie asks again, when they’ve cleaned up and retreated back into bed. The storm’s still pounding outside, but Eddie’s warm and clean and dry between his covers. Richie’s got his head over Eddie’s heart, listening to it beat inside his chest while Eddie’s fingers thread absently through Richie’s tangled curls.

“Am I _sure?”_ Eddie echoes incredulously. “Richie, this is the most okay thing you’ve ever done. Usually you’re just bugging the crap outta me.”

“Love you, too,” Richie grumbles, unable to stop grinning long enough to properly do the bit. Eddie smiles right back at him, though, so it’s fine.

“I love you,” Eddie says. “I’m serious. I mean it.”

Richie, thank fuck, finally believes him, and tips his head up for another kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> You can (and should!) come chat with me on Twitter at [@nicolelianesolo](https://twitter.com/nicolelianesolo) and/or on Tumblr at [andillwriteyouatragedy](http://andillwriteyouatragedy.tumblr.com/). I'm currently taking commissions there, as well!


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